Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Refining the color pallet

Chalo Chalo's color pallet hasn't been getting the most attention so far. Time for some tweaks.

The current pallet functions pretty well, except for color blind people. They are having problems distinguishing the players' colors. Also the pallet looks rather prototypish. Which in a way it is, but it would benefit from some refinement.

The current colors:

The good:
- The player colors are easily communicated. "I'm red, you're blue and we need to stop that green dude".
- Ice is white and the slow tar is black. Also this is easy to explain to the players.
- The speedy terrain (yellow) is easily spotted. Which helps planning your path quickly.
- All player colors are different from the colors used in the terrain. This prevents players from thinking their color is connected to the terrain behaviour.

The bad:
- Color blindness prevents clear distinction between the players' colors.
- The color pallet feels like it is still a placeholder. It lacks refinement.

A

This one mostly feels as if a yellow filter is added to the whole scene. It feels a bit retro. Rather pleasant to the eye, but not fresh enough.

I really like that the tar isn't black and has a little red in it. It will be still easy for players to point that one out by referring to it as the dark patches. Probably still close enough to black to be called black by quite some players.

The same applies to the ice. No longer pure white makes the pallet more subtle. It's a bit too close to the yellow now.

Also I removed the black outer ring of the players. That ring helps a lot in making the players stand out against all backgrounds, but I'm going to try and see how far we can get without. It looks a lot nicer.

B

With this one I tried to keep all colors in a limited color pallet. All colors relate to blue or red. Visually nice, but difficult to get all contrasts right. Especially the lighter colored players don't stand out on ice.

What does work well is to have the ice and neutral terrain have a blueish hue and contrasting that with the reds of the tar and speedy terrains. All terrains are very easy to read.

C

So far I like this one best.
The colors seem fresh and unfiltered. Will have to still test it for color blindness.
I guess this means the speedy terrain becomes grass : )

Chalo Chalo is a racing game that doesn't focus on speed, but on tactical choices and outsmarting your friends. You compete locally with three to eight players at the same time on the same screen.

A unique landscape is generated for each race. During the countdown you make a plan, taking into account the terrain, your opponents and the power pickups.

With a special power, or just a simple nudge, you can send an opponent off track, sometimes with fatal consequences. But when the others are closing in, be sure you can pull it off without harming your own position.

Tomasz is best known for creating the anarchistic propaganda cartoon George Ought to Help
and its sequels. He also makes electronic music under the Mormo alias and created sound
effects for Sparpweed's game ibb & obb.